Comment author: theduffman 09 November 2012 10:37:09AM -1 points [-]
Comment author: Pablo_Stafforini 28 October 2012 06:09:51PM 0 points [-]

Please update the magnet URI. Let me know if you are still encountering problems.

Comment author: theduffman 06 November 2012 09:39:00AM 1 point [-]

There are no seeds during the day (Australian time). And then I leave my computer on overnight and it only downloads an extra couple of percent. downloading at about 4kB/sec. Unlikely to be a problem on my end. Would be keen for increased seeding of this. And then I can split up the file, pick the good parts and then repackage it in a new LW/rationality torrent. :/ Just as soon as it gets seeded better.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 November 2012 04:50:32PM 1 point [-]

What did they make of the dust speck dilemma?

Comment author: theduffman 05 November 2012 11:16:21PM 0 points [-]

The 3^^^3 dust specks vs torture dillema is an axis that utilitarians can vary on.

Most utilitarians on Felicifia understand scope insensitivity and will prefer a small amount of torture. Of the rest, some believe in fundamentally different grades of suffering.

Comment author: theduffman 05 November 2012 01:31:00PM 5 points [-]

Amount of money spent is a radically different thing from amount of good done. Even among charities effectiveness can differ by about 1000x. Government spending is likely to fall more in line with the least effective charities because it is biased by political motives. Most spending is not even in areas that are likely to be effective like global health, or rationality outreach. The money that is spent on global health is politically directed, going largely to local neighbours and sites of war and terrorism, not to those most in need.

As the most effective charities are likely 100-10000x more effective than government spending, the calculation should be adjusted down by 3-5 orders of magnitude. We're looking at more like $0.01 - $15,000 as the equivalent impact.

Comment author: theduffman 05 November 2012 11:38:28AM 3 points [-]

The Felicifia forum for utilitarians has an overlapping userbase and is nearby to your suggestion in concept-space: http://felicifia.org/

Comment author: beoShaffer 02 November 2012 06:14:00AM 0 points [-]

You could try the singularity summit videos.

Comment author: theduffman 02 November 2012 06:23:49AM 0 points [-]

Thanks. Yes, I've downloaded these. It would be great if someone had a video collection of past Singularity Summits and AGI meetings...

Comment author: theduffman 02 November 2012 05:33:14AM 1 point [-]

Can someone please recommend me rationality and FAI-related materials. Books. Audiobooks. Lecture videos. Anything that I can obtain cheaply or freely online, that will give me something useful during some upcoming long flights.

Comment author: Raemon 01 November 2012 01:13:23AM 0 points [-]

If we're focusing on Nick's four classes, can he write up a more in depth description of them and post them here, so that we can think about them in more detail.

Comment author: theduffman 01 November 2012 11:38:59AM *  1 point [-]

Good point. I've contacted him. I suppose we should discuss it at a later date instead.

I suggest as an alternative topic of discussion - identifying cascades, cycles, insights and recursive loops that might be available to altruistic actions. An abstract but important issue.

"Cascades are when one development leads the way to another - for example, once you discover gravity, you might find it easier to understand a coiled spring.

Cycles are feedback loops where a process's output becomes its input on the next round. As the classic example of a fission chain reaction illustrates, a cycle whose underlying processes are continuous, may show qualitative changes of surface behavior - a threshold of criticality - the difference between each neutron leading to the emission of 0.9994 additional neutrons versus each neutron leading to the emission of 1.0006 additional neutrons. k is the effective neutron multiplication factor and I will use it metaphorically.

Insights are items of knowledge that tremendously decrease the cost of solving a wide range of problems - for example, once you have the calculus insight, a whole range of physics problems become a whole lot easier to solve. Insights let you fly through, or teleport through, the solution space, rather than searching it by hand - that is, "insight" represents knowledge about the structure of the search space itself. and finally,

Recursion is the sort of thing that happens when you hand the AI the object-level problem of "redesign your own cognitive algorithms".

Comment author: theduffman 31 October 2012 10:23:37AM 0 points [-]

http://lesswrong.com/lw/va/measuring_optimization_power/ and a couple of posts before and after are variations on the ideas of Daniel Dennett's The Intentional Stance. I loved both versions.

Comment author: Giles 28 October 2012 09:20:30PM 3 points [-]

Thanks for setting this up! (It feels like about the right length of time has passed since the last one, so thanks for taking the initiative).

A general comment on the agenda: I feel like it's too broad. Discussion of "Utility of EA organisations", "rationality" or "x-risk" could each easily fill a meeting - I'd prefer we pick just one of them and list some subtopics on the agenda. That way we'll come with a better idea of what we're going to be talking about and hopefully avoid just rehashing what we already know.

Comment author: theduffman 29 October 2012 12:20:06AM 1 point [-]

You're right. I changed X-risk to 'critique nick's four classes', cut 'rationality' and postponed the discussion of utility of EA organisations.

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